Day 21 Thursday, September 16 -- Wanganui and Egmont National Park

Synopsis

We toured around Wanganui for a while in the morning, starting the day off swing on a big rope swing and swung out over the river (it was a blast). We exhausted Wanganui’s tourist attractions by mid-morning, then headed north along the west coast to Egmont National Park. We drove through the rain, and for all we knew, the giant, almost perfectly conical volcano that we drove around could have not been there. This was a bit of a disappointment considering it was the reason we had changed course towards the west coast. Oh well! We ended up spending the night near the Waitomo Caves where we had booked an underground adventure the following day.

Detailed Journal

We were up this morning at about 730 for some cereal and toast and the morning campervan duties. We had no real plans for the day, so we decided to take the time for a mini-excursion near the holiday park recommended by the lady when we checked in. Just a short 5km beyond the campsite is a “big swing that goes out over the river”. Jason wasn’t too jazzed about it, but Lynette convinced him to check it out. We are glad we did – a great 20-minute start to the day. We took turns jumping on the long swing. We had one minor scare when the swing pulled Lynette off the shore, hanging on by her hands, over a huge, gnarly fallen tree….but there were no injuries for the day.

From there, we headed for the Visitor’s Center in Wanginui. We asked a lady there about the Tongariro Crossing, a full day hike that we really want to do in the Tongariro National Park. She gave us the contact number for the DOC office at the park and pulled out weather information for the next few days. It doesn’t look like a hike we are going to be able to do this week. We went ahead and called the DOC office to get their opinion. According to their forecast through Monday, it didn’t look good for us. With that we decided to call the Legendary Black Water Rafting Company to book the other big ticket North Island adventure – Cave tubing in the glowworm caves in Waitoma. We booked ourselves for the 11am excursion tomorrow called the Black Abyss. More details on that tomorrow.

We decided to head west along SH3 towards Egmont National Park. It was such a clear morning, we thought the views of Mt. Egmont, a near perfect conical dormant volcano out on the coast with little around it, would be incredible. Based on the guide books, we decided to take the surf highway around the mountain for spectacular surf and mountain views. Both books mentioned a local joke, “If you can see the mountain, it’s going to rain. If you can’t, it’s already raining.” We couldn’t see the mountain. Even when we made the extra drive up to the Visitor’s Center and Look-out point. We saw grey clouds and rain, but no mountain. It was a bit disappointing. It did, however, make us reflect back to a conversation with our guide on the Fox Glacier. He had mentioned that we weren’t experiencing a New Zealand rain that day – it was just “low cloud cover or something”. He said, “When it rains in New Zealand, you’ll know it. You’ll need a breathing apparatus.” He wasn’t kidding, portions on the drive included a serious downpour. Rain that could possibly put Arizona to shame. The upside of the “scenic” drive was the numerous calla lilies that were growing along creek beds near the road. Huge flowers. They were beautiful.

After the disappointment at Mount Egmont, we headed out towards Waitoma for the night. We considered a stop/ beach walk at the Three Sisters (we have no idea what this was) and the White Cliffs before deciding just to head for the campsite. This mini-stop, however, produced our first “bear” sighting. A beanie baby-size teddy was tied up to the street sign. Weird.

We arrived at the Waitoma Top 10 Holiday Park at around 7pm. Jason had a brief conversation with a couple from Spokane here on their honeymoon for 12 days (finally someone with a shorter vacation than us – of course, they were also from the US). We found our spot, did some laundry, downloaded our pictures, and grilled some steaks with peas and carrots and some left-over cheese-filled tortellini with basil sauce. We accompanied this fine meal with Monteith’s before calling it a night.